That Protestants, that so-called orthodox Protestants at least, profess to hold, and claim as belonging to their Protestantism, many things that are also held by Catholics, nobody denies; but these things are no part of Protestantism, for the Church held and taught them ages before Protestantism was born. They are part and parcel of the one Catholic faith, and belong to Catholics only. Protestants can rightfully claim as Protestant only those things wherein they differ from the Church, which the Church denies, and which they assert; that is, what is peculiarly or distinctively Protestant. We cannot allow them to claim as theirs what is and always has been ours; we willingly accord them their own, but not one whit more. All which they profess to hold in common with us is ours, not theirs. Adopting this rule, which is just and unimpeachable, nothing in fact is theirs but their denials, and as all their denials are, as we have seen, made on no Catholic principle or truth, they are pure negations, and hence Protestantism is purely negative, and consequently is no religion, for all religion is affirmative.

The Protestant Reformation resulted in the continuous division of churches over the interpretation of Scripture, each new denomination insisting on its own as authentic. But of course, since they all contradict each other, they can’t all be correct. The divisions continue to this day—thousands of them. If this is reformation, I’d hate to see chaos!

Mary was a stumbling block, but the Church’s doctrines/dogmas regarding her were not the major stumbling block. Once I had the separation of Protestants and Catholics narrowed down to the question of authority and the nature of the Church, I had come to the conclusion that “if the Catholic Church’s claims are true, and the Apostles and their successors had authentic sacramental authority granted by Christ, then I would have to submit to that authority regardless of what I thought in order to be authentically Christian” and that Catholicism meant humbling oneself instead of placing one’s opinion of matters on a pedestal, I began to take the approach of reading Church teaching from the eyes of a Catholic, so-to-speak (lending some level of trust to it). Not because I was submitting to the authority of the Church at that time, but only because I realized that unless I tried on the Catholic glasses, I’d never be able to understand it from a Catholic point-of-view. It was only by God’s Grace and by giving the Catholic view a chance, that I began to see how necessary, beautiful, and Christological the Marian doctrines and dogmas are. Also, from a historical standpoint, there is no doubt that these doctrines and dogmas were represented in various devotions, writings, and quotes from the Early Fathers. So, aside from my conclusion on the importance of the authority question that led me to seek an understanding of Marian doctrines, I also came to realize that the anti-Marian Protestant position I had been raised to hold did not gel with historical Christianity at all, but was a rather new development.

Sects then owe it to themselves, as soon as they have fulfilled their historical vocation, to fall back again to the general Church communion from which they have seceded, as in no other way can their spiritual acquisitions be either completed or secured, and they must themselves otherwise stiffen into monumental petrifacations, never to be revisited with the warm life pulse of the one universal Church.

The breakaway Christian churches that diminish Mary’s role inevitably end up feeling like a bachelor’s apartment: masculine to a fault; orderly but not homey; functional and productive – but with little sense of beauty and poetry.